Author Topic: Spambot Rampage  (Read 22707 times)

Vee

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #20 on: March 08, 2016, 11:21:54 PM »
If only there were some way to rig Mids into a captcha.

eabrace

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #21 on: March 09, 2016, 12:13:24 AM »
If only there were some way to rig Mids into a captcha.
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Blondeshell

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #22 on: March 09, 2016, 03:57:01 AM »
Ooh, that'd be perfect!

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #23 on: March 10, 2016, 09:45:28 PM »
I just force logged out everybody. Sorry if I hit anyone in the middle of anything. We got hit by another spammer whose account was created on 2/23 and whose password was blanked out, so I'm assuming they had already created a session before we cleared their password.

Aggelakis

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #24 on: March 14, 2016, 06:07:48 PM »
Had another few spams made. Deleted & blocked spammer. Hmm.
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Manga

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #25 on: March 14, 2016, 08:30:14 PM »
You're probably going to have to set new accounts to manual approval for 7 days so the bots will give up trying.

EDIT:  I'll also PM you with one of two tricks I use at another site that really did bring spammers to a complete halt.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2016, 08:37:58 PM by Manga »

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #26 on: March 14, 2016, 10:50:25 PM »
Looks like the latest spammer registered on 3/11 and spammed on 3/14, so I guess the 24 hour delay is insufficient. I just bumped it up to a week.

Mediawiki has some anti-spam extensions that would probably help. One of them is a URL blacklist (which is actively maintained), and I suspect that would probably do the trick for us. But it didn't work when I tried to install it, I think it's incompatible with DPL somehow. So I'll have to tinker with that at some point to figure out what the problem is.

Please do send me a PM if you have some tricks you think may help. Certainly can't hurt to have more options on the table. :)

Manga

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #27 on: March 15, 2016, 03:44:42 AM »

Sent!  Implement that, and the spammers will have some serious difficulty registering accounts.

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #28 on: March 16, 2016, 04:57:45 AM »
Okay, I just updated registration. It now forbids throw-away email accounts and it also now uses Manga's suggestion (thanks for the tip!). Hopefully that'll help cut back further on spam account registrations.

JoshexProxy

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #29 on: March 18, 2016, 03:41:29 PM »
if you have trouble with spammers again, I have another anti-spammer thing that I was saving for if things got rough with bots in project bane. it guarantees the a human must perform the captcha.

or you could do mids captcha on stats "if you slot 4 of [set] what bonus will you get?"

Sekoia

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #30 on: March 18, 2016, 08:05:49 PM »
A captcha is supposed to be hard for computers but relatively easy for humans.

"What archetype's icon is this?" is easy for anyone who's played the game. For someone who's new to the community, it may be difficult. I don't want to assume that everybody who registers is already familiar with the game. It's entirely possible people might recruit friends to play on Paragon Chat who never had played the game. If they can't answer the captcha, they might decide it's not worth the effort.

"What bonus do you get from slotting <whatever>?" is going to be hard for just about everybody to answer. Few people have set bonuses memorized. Even among people who played the game actively, there are going to be plenty of people who won't know where to find the answer to that on their own. For people who have never played the game, they might not even know what the question means, much less where to find the answer.

So while I appreciate those suggestions, I'm afraid I probably won't be using them. And I'd advise against using them on your own sites as well, unless you're very certain that everybody registering can easily answer the question--or unless you don't care if you deter real people from registering.

Codewalker

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #31 on: March 18, 2016, 08:39:10 PM »
Plus I'm pretty sure that the last round were not bot registrations, but rather human registered accounts that were then handed over to a bot. So a better captcha wouldn't really help much if it's something that could be googled.

The upside of that is that it was relatively few accounts involved that could then be banned, instead of hundreds.

JoshexProxy

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #32 on: March 19, 2016, 04:56:44 AM »
Plus I'm pretty sure that the last round were not bot registrations, but rather human registered accounts that were then handed over to a bot. So a better captcha wouldn't really help much if it's something that could be googled.

The upside of that is that it was relatively few accounts involved that could then be banned, instead of hundreds.

the obvious fix for that is not allowing direct edits, force them all to go through mod approval.

Manga

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #33 on: March 19, 2016, 06:04:20 AM »
the obvious fix for that is not allowing direct edits, force them all to go through mod approval.

The point might be moot if the upgrade I suggested works like it should.  It won't stop manually made spam accounts completely, but it will make it incredibly obnoxious to create a lot of them.

I still have an additional stage of protection that will make the posting bots suffer, but I have a feeling it won't be necessary.


JoshexProxy

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #34 on: March 19, 2016, 06:50:28 AM »
The point might be moot if the upgrade I suggested works like it should.  It won't stop manually made spam accounts completely, but it will make it incredibly obnoxious to create a lot of them.

I still have an additional stage of protection that will make the posting bots suffer, but I have a feeling it won't be necessary.

post submit captcha I presume. nice.

Manga

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Re: Spambot Rampage
« Reply #35 on: March 19, 2016, 01:52:29 PM »
post submit captcha I presume. nice.

Nope.  Way more evil than that.